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Traffic congestion has continued to grow as a result of urbanization, which is associated with an increase in car ownership. As a way to improve the efficiency of the transportation system, emerging technologies including Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs), loop detectors, Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATISs), and Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTSs) are being deployed. One of the successful techniques that has demonstrated benefits for system users, operators and agencies is Transit Signal Priority (TSP). TSP favors transit vehicles in the allocation of green times at traffic signals. A successful deployment of TSP depends on different factors including the prediction of various components of transit vehicle travel times to predict when a vehicle would arrive at a traffic signal. Current TSP state-of-the-art and state-of-practice disregards the impact of bus stops, transit vehicle characteristics, driver, and the prevailing traffic conditions on the predicted arrival time of transit vehicles at traffic signals. Considering these factors is important the success of TSP hinges on the ability to predict transit vehicle arrival times at traffic signals in order to provide these vehicles with priority service. The main contribution of this research effort relates to the modeling of the various components of transit vehicle travel times. This model explicitly captures the impact of passengers, drivers and vehicle characteristics on transit vehicle travel times thus providing better models for use in various transit applications, including TSP. Furthermore, the thesis presents a comprehensive understanding of the determinants of each travel time component. In essence, the determinants of each component, the stochasticity in these determinants and the correlation between them are explicitly modeled and captured. To achieve its contribution, the study starts by improving the current state-of-the-art and state-of-practice transit vehicle boarding/alighting (BA) models by explicitly accounting for the different factors that impact BA times while ensuring a relatively generalized formulation. Current formulations are specific for the localities and bus configurations that they were developed for. Alternatively, the proposed BA time model is independent of the transit vehicle capacity and transit vehicle configuration (except for the fact that it is only valid for two-door buses – a separate door for alighting and boarding the bus) and accounts for the number of on-board passengers, boarding and alighting passengers. The model also captures the stochasticity and the correlation between the model coefficients with minimum computational requirements. Next the model was extended to capture the bus driver and vehicle impacts on the transit vehicle delay in the vicinity of bus stops, using a vehicle kinematics model with maximum speed and acceleration constraints to model the acceleration/deceleration delay. The validation of the model was done using field data that cover different driving conditions. Results of this work found that the proposed formulation successfully integrated the human and vehicle characteristics component in the model and that the new formulation improves the estimation of the total delay that transit vehicles experience near bus stops. Finally, the model was extended to estimate the time required to merge into the adjacent lane and the time required to traverse a queue upstream of a traffic signal. The final part of this study models the bus arrival time at traffic signal using shockwave and prediction model in a connected environment. This section aims to model the transit vehicle arrival time at traffic signal considering the impact of signal timing and the prevailing traffic conditions. In summary, the proposed model overcomes the current state-of-the-art models in the following ways: 1) it accounts for the vehicle capacity and the number of on-board passengers on bus BA times, 2) it captures the stochasticity in the bus stop demand and the associated BA times, 3) it captures the impact of the traffic in modeling the delay at a bus stop , 4) it incorporates the driver and vehicle impact by modeling the acceleration and deceleration time, and 5) it uses shockwave analysis to estimate bus arrival times through the use of emerging technology data. Through statistical modeling and evaluation using field and simulated data, the model overcomes the current state-of practice and state-of art transit vehicle arrival time models. / Doctor of Philosophy / Traffic congestion grows rapidly causing increment in travel time, reducing travel time reliability, and reducing the number of public transportation riders. Using the Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTS) technology with Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATISs) helps in improving transportation network travel time by providing real-time travel information. One of the successful techniques that has demonstrated benefits for system users, operators and agencies is Transit Signal Priority (TSP). A successful deployment of TSP depends on different factors including the prediction of various components of transit vehicle travel times to predict when a vehicle would arrive at a traffic signal. Current TSP state-of-the-art and state-of-practice disregards the impact of bus stops, transit vehicle characteristics, driver, and the prevailing traffic conditions on the predicted arrival time of transit vehicles at traffic signals. The difficulty of modeling the various determinants of the transit vehicle travel time as explicit variables rather than include some of them are implicitly modeled due to two main reasons. First, there are various significant factors affecting estimating the transit vehicle arrival time including; the passenger demand at bus stop, driver characteristics, vehicle characteristics and the adjacent prevailing traffic conditions. Second, the stochasticity and the fluctuation nature of each variables as they differ spatiotemporally. The research presented in this thesis provides a comprehensive investigation of the determinants of different transit vehicle travel time components of the transit vehicle arrival time at traffic signal leading to a better implementing of TSP. This study was initiated due to the noticeable overlooking of the different factors including human and vehicle behavior in the current state-of-practice and state-of-art which, as a result, fails to capture and incorporate the impact of these components on the implementing of TSP.

Magnetorheological (MR) fluids offer solutions to many engineering challenges. The success of MR fluid is apparent in many disciplines, ranging from the automotive and civil engineering communities to the biomedical engineering community. This well documented success of MR fluids continues to motivate current and future applications of MR fluid. One such application that has been considered recently is MR fluid devices for use in impact and other high velocity applications. In such applications, the fluid environment within the device may be well beyond the scope of our understanding for these fluids. To date, little has been done to explore the suitability of MR fluids in such high velocity and high shear applications. While future applications may expose the fluid to adverse flow conditions, we must also consider current and existing applications which expose the fluid to extreme flow environments. Consider, for example, an MR damper intended for automotive primary suspensions, in which shear rates may exceed 10^5 s^-1. Flow conditions within these dampers far exceed existing fluid behavior characterization. The aim of the current study is to identify the behavior of the fluid under these extreme operating conditions. Specifically, this study intends to identify the behavior of MR fluid subject to high rates of shear and high flow velocities. A high shear rheometer is built which allows for the high velocity testing of MR fluids. The rheometer is capable of fluid velocities ranging from 1 m/s to 37 m/s, with corresponding shear rates ranging from 0.14x10^5 s^-1 to 2.5x10^5 s^-1. Fluid behavior is characterized in both the off-state and the on-state. The off-state testing was conducted in order to identify the high shear viscosity of the fluid. Because the high shear behavior of MR fluid is largely governed by the behavior of the carrier fluid, the carrier fluid behavior was also identified at high shear. Experiments were conducted using the high shear rheometer and the MR fluid was shown to exhibit nearly Newtonian post-yield behavior. A slight thickening was observed for growing shear rates. This slight thickening can be attributed to the behavior of the carrier fluid, which exhibited considerable thickening at high shear. The purpose of the on-state testing was to characterize the MR effect at high flow velocities. As such, the MR fluid was run through the rheometer at various flow velocities and a number of magnetic field strengths. The term "dwell time" is introduced and defined as the amount of time the fluid spends in the presence of a magnetic field. Two active valve lengths were considered, which when coupled to the fluid velocities, generated dwell times ranging from 12 ms to 0.18 ms. The yield stress was found from the experimental measurements and the results indicate that the magnitude of the yield stress is sensitive to fluid dwell time. As fluid dwell times decrease, the yield stress developed in the fluid decreases. The results from the on-state testing clearly demonstrate a need to consider fluid dwell times in high velocity applications. Should the dwell time fall below the response time of the fluid, the yield stress developed in the fluid may only achieve a fraction of the expected value. These results imply that high velocity applications may be subject to diminished controllability for falling dwell times. Results from this study may serve to aid in the design of MR fluid devices intended for high velocity applications. Furthermore, the identified behavior may lead to further developments in MR fluid technology. In particular, the identified behavior may be used to develop or identify an MR fluid well suited for high velocity and high shear applications. / Ph. D.

In this thesis the Tobii eye-tracker 4L was used to investigate how well eye-tracking solutions such as a confirmation-click and dwell-time algorithm compares to the standard mouse input device when performing selection tasks in a map environment. In order to distinguish the different complexity one could face, two user cases are proposed. Scenario one includes non clustered objects. Scenario two include clustered occluded objects. A user study with nine different participants where conducted in order to compare the execution times and find out how error prone the different methods were. Each test participant performed eight different tests, three in the non-clustered scenario and five in the clustered scenario. In two of the tests in the clustered scenario test participants were aided with zooming through a zoom algorithm. The methods was evaluated by calculating the average execution times and errors along with the corresponding standard deviations. In order to grasp the users experience a subjective cognitive load score was calculated with the help of a questionnaire. The eye-tracker methods was found to be competitive in comparison to mouse interaction in the more simple non-clustered case. However, in a more complex scenario such as the clustered case the mouse interaction had the lowest average completion time and cognitive load score. A different type of selection behaviour was discovered among the test participants in the clustered scenario due to the difference in precision between the eye-tracker and mouse interaction. Finally interesting areas to consider in the future is presented and discussed. / I denna avhandling användes en Tobii eye-tracker 4L för att undersöka hur väl eye-tracking metoder så som en bekräftelseklick och dwell-time algoritm jämför sig med standard mus interaktion vid objekt selektion i en kartmiljö. För att urskilja variationen i komplexitet man kan möta föreslås två olika användarfall. Scenario ett inkluderar objekt som är distinktivt separerade och därav ej grupperade. Scenario två inkluderar grupperade samt ockluderade objekt. En användarstudie med nio olika deltagare genomfördes för att jämföra exekveringstiderna och ta reda på hur felbenägna de olika metoderna var. Varje testdeltagare utförde åtta olika tester, tre i det icke-grupperade scenariot och fem i det grupperade scenariot. I två av testerna i det grupperade scenariot fick deltagarna hjälp med att zooma genom en zoomalgoritm. Metoderna utvärderades genom att beräkna de genomsnittliga exekveringstiderna samt antal fel tillsammans med motsvarande standardavvikelser. För att förstå hur användarna upplevde de olika metoderna togs en subjektiv kognitiv belastningspoäng fram genom ett frågeformulär. Eye-tracker metoderna var konkurrenskraftiga i jämförelse med musinteraktion i det enklare fallet där objekt ej var grupperade. I ett mer komplext scenario, såsom i det grupperade fallet, hade dock musinteraktionen den lägsta genomsnittliga exekveringstiden och kognitiva belastningspoängen. En annan typ av selektions beteende upptäcktes bland testdeltagarna i det grupperade scenariot på grund av skillnaden i precision mellan eye-trackern och musinteraktionen. Slutligen presenteras och diskuteras intressanta områden att överväga vid framtida arbeten.

A presente dissertação examina os diferentes arranjos escravos de moradia do Rio de Janeiro no período de 1808 a 1850 a partir das complexas relações estabelecidas entre: cativos, senhores e o Estado. A maior mobilidade escrava, característica dos grandes centros urbanos, permitiu que o alargamento da autonomia cativa também se expressasse por meio da atividade do morar, cuja variedade pode ser observada nos relatos de viajantes, documentação policial, posturas municipais, pedidos e licenças encaminhados à Câmara Municipal e inventários post-mortem. A diversidade do morar escravo possibilita, ainda, entender mais a fundo os condicionantes que viabilizaram a manutenção da instituição escravista durante o conturbado período da formação do Estado nacional brasileiro, assim como cativos e seus descendentes conseguiram refazer laços de solidariedade, afeto e parentesco em meio a tal processo / The present dissertation examines the different slave-arranged housing in Rio de Janeiro in the period between 1808 to 1850 from the complex relations established between slave, owners and the State. The big slave mobility, which was a characteristic of the great urban centers, made possible slave\'s autonomy to widen itself through dwelling activity, whose variety could be observed in the stories of travelers, police documents, municipal positions, order and licenses directed to the City Council and post-mortem inventories. Besides, the diversity of slave\'s dwelling allows us to understand more deeply the determining factors that made possible the maintenance of the slavery institution during the disturbing period of Brazilian National State formation, and, also, how slaves and their descendants could create anew bonds of solidarity, affection and kinship in the middle of these process

A presente dissertação examina os diferentes arranjos escravos de moradia do Rio de Janeiro no período de 1808 a 1850 a partir das complexas relações estabelecidas entre: cativos, senhores e o Estado. A maior mobilidade escrava, característica dos grandes centros urbanos, permitiu que o alargamento da autonomia cativa também se expressasse por meio da atividade do morar, cuja variedade pode ser observada nos relatos de viajantes, documentação policial, posturas municipais, pedidos e licenças encaminhados à Câmara Municipal e inventários post-mortem. A diversidade do morar escravo possibilita, ainda, entender mais a fundo os condicionantes que viabilizaram a manutenção da instituição escravista durante o conturbado período da formação do Estado nacional brasileiro, assim como cativos e seus descendentes conseguiram refazer laços de solidariedade, afeto e parentesco em meio a tal processo / The present dissertation examines the different slave-arranged housing in Rio de Janeiro in the period between 1808 to 1850 from the complex relations established between slave, owners and the State. The big slave mobility, which was a characteristic of the great urban centers, made possible slave\'s autonomy to widen itself through dwelling activity, whose variety could be observed in the stories of travelers, police documents, municipal positions, order and licenses directed to the City Council and post-mortem inventories. Besides, the diversity of slave\'s dwelling allows us to understand more deeply the determining factors that made possible the maintenance of the slavery institution during the disturbing period of Brazilian National State formation, and, also, how slaves and their descendants could create anew bonds of solidarity, affection and kinship in the middle of these process

The use of short columns, higher carrier gas velocity and fast temperature programs in Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography coupled to Time-of- Flight Mass Spectrometry (GC x GC/TOFMS) technique is expected to increase the speed of analysis up to several orders of magnitude when compared to conventional gas chromatography (GC) or gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). A systematic evaluation of the GC x GC/TOFMS configuration for high-speed applications has received little attention in the literature. The feasibility of High Speed Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography coupled to Mass Spectrometry (High speed GC x GC/MS) for complex mixtures has been investigated in this thesis. A particular focus was placed on comparing conventional scanning quadrupole mass spectrometry (qMS) with a newly available non-scanning time-of-flight instruments (TOFMS). Experiments were carried out using GC/qMS, GC x GC/qMS, GC/TOFMS and GC x GC/TOFMS both in normal (slow) and fast temperature rates coupled with high frequency modulation in GC x GC. Initially a complex mixture consists of 24 semivolatile compounds was used as the analyte for the above purpose. In the initial experiments parameters like acquisition rate and duty cycle for qMS were determined to evaluate the effectiveness of the instrument for fast analysis. The practical duty cycle value obtained for the qMS was only about 18 % for single ion and one compound at a dwell time of 10 ms in SIM mode. In both high-speed GC/qMS and high-speed GC x GC/qMS techniques only about 40 % of the components in the complex mixture were found to be well separated. The acquisition rate of scanning instruments like qMS is incompatible for fast eluting peaks in high speed GC. TOFMS that has an acquisition rate of several hundred spectra per second offer the potential to define the fast GC peaks accurately. The high quality spectra from TOFMS also enable deconvolution of coeluting peaks in the complex mixtures. The advantage of the automated spectral deconvolution is demonstrated for the identification of the coeluting peaks in the complex mixtures. Coelution of peaks is also observed with highspeed GC/TOFMS technique. The high-speed GC x GC/TOFMS was also tested with two different analyte system ??? A pesticide mixture and platformate (an aromatic mixture) to evaluate the suitability for high-speed analysis of complex mixtures. A poor resolution was observed for the pesticide mixture in the two-dimensional plane and it appeared, as there was nearly no orthogonal separation in the second dimension. The platformate mixture displayed a better two-dimensional separation. Chromatographic peak resolution is not really a primary requirement for locating and identifying the coeluting compounds in high-speed GC x GC/TOFMS technique. However, it was observed that the high-speed GC x GC/TOFMS too faced problem to unscramble the mass spectra of those compounds with similar structure and sharing the same unique masses.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain understanding of the load on flat target surfaces produced by projectile impact. Models are proposed from which upper and lower bounds can be derived for the transition be-tween interface defeat and normal penetration. It is shown that the dominating contribution to the normal load is generally provided by the hydrodynamic pressure due to the effect of inertia. In addition it is shown that the contributions from yield strength and compressibility are also significant. For a cylindrical tungsten alloy projectile at an impact velocity representative of to-day’s ordnance velocities, the contributions to the load intensity on the axis of symmetry from yield strength and compressibility are shown to be 15% and 3.4%, respectively, of that of inertia. Impact tests have shown that for conical projectiles transition from interface defeat to penetration occurs at a significantly lower impact velocity than for cylindrical projectiles. In order to better understand the influence of projectile shape, a conical projectile in axi-symmetric impact is studied by use of an analytical model for self-similar flow, and the results obtained are compared to results of numerical simula-tions. It is shown how the maximum load intensity, and the position of the maximum, depends on the apex angle. For an apex angle of 90º, the maximum load intensity is found to be almost three times that pro-duced by a cylindrical projectile with the same impact velocity. This maximum occurs well off the axis of symmetry and is 20% larger than the load intensity at this axis. Both the self-similar model and the nu-merical simulations show that the contribution to the load intensity from compressibility is positive below and negative above an apex angle of around 80º. The contribution of yield strength to the load in-tensity at centre of impact depends only weakly on the apex angle and is therefore similar to that of a cylindrical projectile.

Schnellläuferstrategien sind Lagerstrategien, welche den Durchsatz von Lagern durch geeignete Wahl der Lagerorte im Lager steigern. Die verschiedenen existierenden Strategien wurden bisher uneinheitlich beschrieben und umgesetzt. Aussagen zu Durchsatzsteigerungen fallen schwer. Die existierenden Strategien werden systematisiert und als Vergleichsbasis für die neue Strategie "Dynamische Zonierung" herangezogen. Die "Dynamische Zonierung" ist dabei sowohl die einfachste als auch die leistungsfähigste Schnellläuferstrategie. Dafür sorgt die konsequente Anwendung zweier Verfahren, welche bereits einzeln sinnvoll sind, aber erst gemeinsam ihr volles Potential entfalten: Erstens erübrigt die Abbildung der Verweildauerverteilung auf die Fahrzeitverteilung jegliche Zonierung. Damit entfallen die Aufwände für Planung und Berechnung von Zonengrenzen und -zuordnungen. Gleichzeitig kann so die bei Zonenbildung unvermeidliche Abbildungsunschärfe beseitigt werden. Eine von einer optimalen Zuordnung abweichende Lagerortwahl resultiert nun ausschließlich aus Prognosefehlern. Zweites stellt die lagereinheitsbasierte Verweildauerbetrachtung die korrekte Umsetzung des als optimal nachgewiesenen Cube-Per-Order-Kriteriums dar. Ohne Zwang zur Zonenbildung fehlen die der Verwendung lagereinheitsbasierter Verweildauern sonst entgegenstehenden algorithmischen Mehraufwände. Dass auch die Prognose lagereinheitsbasierter Verweildauern für Teile des Sortimentes nicht zu Mehraufwand sondern zur Vereinfachung des Verfahrens führt, spricht zusätzlich für die lagereinheitsbasierte Betrachtung. Auch bei herkömmlicher artikelorientierter Betrachtungsweise kann die Dynamische Zonierung dadurch Leistungsvorteile herausarbeiten. / Turnover-based storage strategies are strategies in warehousing which increase the system throughput by choosing favorable storage locations. Existing strategies have been described and implemented inconsistently when compared to each other. Statements on strategy gains are difficult. Therefore a categorization of turnover-based strategies is devised. The existing strategies serve as basis of comparison for the new strategy "Dynamic Zoning". "Dynamic Zoning" proves to be the simplest turnover-based strategy while giving the highest performance at the same time. This is accomplished by combining two methods. These methods are reasonable when used separately, but only reach their full potential when used together. First, mapping the dwell time (duration of stay) probability distribution to the travel time probability distribution lets zones become obsolete. Efforts to plan and calculate zones can be avoided and the inevitable imprecision when mapping to zones vanishes. Any deviation from the optimal storage location now results from errors in estimation. Second, dwell times must be based on unit loads which is the correct application of the cube-per-order-criterion for optimality. Without the need to use zones this does not result in extra effort to apply the strategy. For a part of the assortment the estimation of unit load dwell times is simpler than before too, making unit load dwell times even more appealing. However, even when using conventional article based dwell time estimates the strategy "Dynamic Zoning" results in higher performance than other strategies.